Time Does Not Tarry
by Idrils Scribe
Summary: Elrond has not climbed a tree in an Age, but when Elrohir's first Elvish Midwinter celebration drives home some painful truths, the Lord of Rivendell will do whatever it takes to get a smile. Or, alternatively: Elrond and Elrohir, sitting in a tree, ... discussing the fates of Elves and Men. Part of the Under Strange Stars Series


_Many thanks to Anoriath for the thorough beta!_

* * *

_"Nay, time does not tarry ever… But change and growth is not in all things and places alike. For the Elves the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because they do not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream. Yet beneath the Sun all things must wear to an end at last."_

_Legolas, in The Fellowship of the Ring._

* * *

Elves were incomprehensible creatures. All the speaking folk of Arda thought fetching firewood a domestic drudgery, but in the darkest dead of winter the Eldar turned it into a celebration of light.

The log-drawing party had set out an orderly procession, fair voices joined in solemn hymns to Manwë and Varda as they wound into the white pillared halls of the beech forest. A frozen crust of snow glittered like a field of scattered diamonds under sledges and felt-lined boots. Elrohir's chest ached with a strange, longing kind of pain at the inhuman beauty of it all, as if his heart would leap out from joy and sorrow both.

The singing grew decidedly more worldly as the day wore on. Like every feast in Imladris, Turuhalmë involved great merriment and uproar from the Wood-elves, fueled by barrels of richly spiced mulled wine from Elrond's cellars. Elrohir was left to wonder what the Valar on their holy mountain would make of those raucous Silvan drinking songs.

Elrond and Celebrían had remained at home - a ruler's gravitas could only bend so far - leaving their sons free to join the day's exuberance. Elladan sang at the top of his lungs, one dark head among a team of Noldorin smiths pulling a sled stacked high with oak logs, his cheeks red from both hard work and good wine. The wreath of holly that crowned his dark, half-braided hair was tipping slightly askew, making him look young and guileless even to Elrohir's eyes. His smile was absolutely radiant.

Elladan came into his own here, among his people. From stablemaid to chief counsellor, he had a smile, a friendly word or a joke for every inhabitant of Imladris. He delivered each in perfectly smooth Silvan, Sindarin or Quenya as needed, just this side of sharp-witted without veering into inappropriate. So much effortless Elvish lordliness sharply reminded Elrohir of how much of a stranger he still was.

Lindir noticed his disheartened air, and lowered his flute to lay an arm around his shoulders. "Come, Elrohir, you need no words for pulling! Let us give them a hand."

Elrohir was taking hold of the braided hithlain pull-rope when the thought struck him.

_It has been two years. _

Perhaps not to the day - even now Elrohir remained uncertain how, exactly, the Haradi calendar translated to the Reckoning of Rivendell.

Two years since Glorfindel dragged him from the smouldering ruin of life as he knew it into an existence so alien that his former language did not possess a word for what he had become. The first winter in Imladris had been easier, in a way. Elrohir had been so beside himself with grief and terror and strangeness that the haze of emotion blunted the reality of it. With regained health came a sharp, painful clarity.

Suddenly the world seemed drained of light and colour and all festive mirth deserted him. Once Lindir's back was turned, Elrohir carefully closed his mind to Elladan's and slipped away between the frosted brambles with a cheery wave and an incoherent shout about fetching more pinecones.

* * *

The Old Man of the valley stood silent and alone, his bare branches crowned with snow and every twig frosted with glittering diamonds beneath the pale winter sun. Two years ago Elrohir could not have made the cold, slippery climb without risking life and limb. He was not a marchwarden just yet, but Ardil's teachings had paid off and he scaled the ancient oak without trouble.

The scar on his flank pulled a little, more of a numb stiffness than real pain. He paused, perched on a bough the size of a wine-barrel, and absent-mindedly kneaded his side. The wound that nearly bled him dry was cut by a cursed blade, and it had been slow to close. Elrond had spent a great deal of time and care mending the gaping slash into a jagged line of proud flesh snaking down Elrohir's body. He still sang over the scar whenever he caught Elrohir rubbing against the numb skin, but Elrohir suspected that his father needed that healing more than he did.

He reached the topmost branch that looked sturdy enough to hold his weight and sat, legs dangling on either side and his back against the trunk. Before him the valley stretched out in a pale patchwork of textured white. A great eagle wheeled over the forbidding peaks of the Misty Mountains in slow, lazy arcs against a cloudless sky of perfect periwinkle. Harsh ice-winds fell from the high snowfields, but Elrohir paid them no heed. He no longer minded the cold.

Winter's chill was no hardship to the well-fed and well-clothed. Three meals each and every day no longer felt so absurdly wasteful. Elrohir had grown two handspans on the plenty of Elrond's table. His gloves were good lambskin lined with wool and stitched with an artful trim of red and green embroidery, his cloak of sturdy, fur-lined broadcloth.  
When he first set foot in Imladris, the unrelenting stream of caring kindness and all the fair and useful things he was given sent his mind in ever-tightening circles around one terrifying question: what will they ask in return?

He now knew the answer in all its inescapable simplicity: _him_. All of Elrohir, anything and everything he could be and do and become now belonged to the Elves.

Not so long ago he had belonged to himself, for a brief and violent span of years. He wondered whether Amuk was still alive. His captain had been old - anyone over fifty was, in Harad. Another ten years at most could see him to his grave. Elrohir would never know. Time flowed differently in Imladris. The Elves did not mark its passing as Mortals did. To them the fleeting years were but ripples in a long, ever-flowing stream.

Of late, Elrohir had strayed into that smooth, languorous river of days. A few weeks spent with Lindir in the library saw him absorbed in the elegance of the Elvish languages, the winter sun's sparkle on the gilt-edged pages of manuscripts older than the kingdoms of Men, the single-minded obsession needed to create such artistry.

Autumn had slid into winter by the time he recalled the outside world. The spell broke when he wandered into the small, artfully wildened garden bordering the scriptorium, astonished to find the bare hawthorns covered in hoarfrost. He had knelt, trailing sleeves of velvet across the frozen ground, plunged both hands into a layer of windblown snow and clung to its grounding chill. Elrohir remained motionless and impervious to Lindir's silent looks of dismay until his ink-stained fingers were blue and numb. It was some time before he looked up to find Elrond crouching beside him with concern in his eyes.

It was terrifying, this certainty that it would happen again. He would lose himself in linguistics or harping or the warm scent of a forest, green and golden under the sun, and decades might slip by unnoticed while the world outside changed and aged and every last Mortal he had ever known went to the grave. The Elves had dealt him nothing but loving kindness, but they had hacked off his Mannish roots more efficiently than violence ever could.

The tree swayed in a stiff breeze. Elrohir's face went numb with a cold, painful sting where the chill mountain winds froze his tears against his cheeks. He had to take off one of his gloves to brush tiny balls of ice from his lashes.

"Elrohir?" Elrond's voice rung from far below him on the ground.

Elrohir did not startle. Someone was bound to come looking sooner or later. He had expected Ardil though, or perhaps Lindir. Elrond and Celebrían had been firmly engaged in receiving a party of Falathrim from the Havens. Hot embarrassment rose to his cheeks as he imagined Lindir barging into the solar mid-supper to announce Elrohir's latest antics as if they were an imminent Orc attack. Perhaps he had been spared a public announcement - Elrond had an uncanny way of knowing what went on in Imladris without being told, and this was not the first time he unerringly located Elrohir in some remote or unlikely place by Elvish magic of some kind.

Either way, the Lord of Imladris had left the reception and changed into hunting leathers to personally deal with the matter of his youngest son crying in a tree.

Elrohir had never seen Elrond climb before, and wondered at him ascending as smooth and sure as any Silvan. Elrond took in Elrohir's tear-stained state as he lowered himself on a nearby branch.

"Ai, Elrohir. Snow does not seem to agree with you." He gave Elrohir that piercing look he had come to know well. "What hurts?" Elrond had become frighteningly good at coaxing uncomfortable truths out of Elrohir.

Elrohir's voice came out steady, if somewhat rough around the edges. "They will soon die, all of them. And I will not know it."

Elrond gave him a pensive look. "True. And their children's children will think you a figure from legend, if they recall your name at all. You will become a complete stranger to the Haradrim in the time it will take you to fully come of age. The years flow through our fingers like water. You cannot hold them whatever you do. This is the sundering of Elves and Men."

Had there been but a trace of smugness Elrohir might have struck him, but Elrond's regard was gentle. "You are allowed to grieve, Elrohir. You need not hide up a tree to do it."

Only now did Elrohir realize that grieving was indeed the word for this jagged ball of misery rattling around inside his chest. He was no longer human, in fact he had never been. One long-year would follow another in a ceaseless procession stretching out into an alien infinity from which even death would bring no release. Elrohir shuddered at the strangeness of it, and for a moment he had to breathe against a fresh wave of panicked tears.

Elrond's hands could not reach Elrohir, separated as they were by a sheer drop to certain death on the frozen forest floor, but his mind did offer comfort. The touch had grown familiar with time, perhaps even comforting. His point was simple and undeniably true: even adrift in a sea of time one familiar handhold remained, steady and eternal as the very earth.

_You are not alone. _

Elrohir took a deep, shuddering breath. "Elladan is happy today. He should remain that way." Another lungful of icy air, steadier this time. "And you should be dining with Lord Galdor."

Elrond smiled. "Your mother will wrangle Galdor. She has done it before." He lost his mirth on his next words. "You have a right to be angry with me."

A hot flush of shame coloured Elrohir's cheeks at finding himself read to the very essence.

Elrond pretended not to notice. "Your homecoming has healed many wounds, Elladan's not in the least, but I am well aware that you had little choice in the matter."

Elrond breathed deeply. "The final choice remains yours, but you should make it with both sides of your nature. Had we left you to live among Mortals, you would have died and passed beyond this world without ever knowing your very self. It would have been neither right nor kind."

Elrond's eyes caught Elrohir's. "I will honour any Choice you make, provided that it is well considered. Get to know both paths before you take the crossroads. It matters little, if you pass a decade to illuminate a manuscript and the next one absorbed in mathematics or mastering the flute. You have until the end of Arda."

Elrond turned away to look out across the valley and the mountains beyond, sharp and bright against the winter sky. Elrohir could hear him swallow, and when he turned back Elrond's eyes gleamed. With dismay Elrohir watched unshed tears freeze his father's lashes into a fine white lacework.

"When Glorfindel returned from Harad and I saw you in his memories, I was terrified. You were the very image of Elros."

Elrohir recalled paintings of Númenor's founding king enthroned in state, and failed to see any similarities.

His look of mute astonishment made Elrond laugh through his tears. "Elros was not born holding the Sceptre. Before he became king he was a warrior, a great captain of Men. You have much of his bearing, in your face and manner."

This was astonishing indeed, and yet it explained much. "Glorfindel never mentioned it."

"Glorfindel never met Elros," Elrond answered. "He was in Mandos at the time." He made it sound like Glorfindel had been on a quick run to the market.

A flash of insight struck Elrohir. "You will do your all to sway Elladan and me towards the Elves." It was a statement of fact rather than reproach.

"I will. What parent would gladly relinquish their children?"

Elrohir suddenly realized the enormity of it. The ragged, gaping hole his sons' deaths would leave in Elrond's universe. Bleeding, grotesque, irreversible. He might survive, but what would come after could hardly be called life.

_And yet he will let us choose. _

There seemed nothing for it but to carefully lower himself to a branch closer to Elrond's, so he might wrap his father in a strange-angled embrace that was eagerly returned. Elrond held Elrohir for an uncountable time, until the silver sound of the great bells up in the tower came singing through the valley, along with a chorus of merry voices, Elladan's among them. The sledge stacked with Yule logs must have reached the house.

"You do not have to attend the feast. It will keep for another year." Elrond said as he straightened the collar of Elrohir's cloak, his hands almost painfully gentle.

Elrohir shook his head. "Elladan should dance tonight, and laugh, and get very nearly improperly drunk. He will do none of those things unless I am there."

Elrond smiled. "Elladan has grand designs on you. He and Glorfindel have decided that it is time for your public singing debut. Apparently there is a wager on whether Elladan can get you drunk enough for 'The Reindeer and the Ent'."

Elrohir could not help but laugh. "How could I refuse my brother his heart's desire, on Turuhalmë no less?"

Elrond joined him, a flash of mirth bubbling in those ancient eyes, and turned to begin the climb down. "Come see me in the morning if you have a headache. I will share my winnings."

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_I hope you enjoyed Elrohir's midwinter adventure. If you did, consider bringing me some holiday cheer with a review. Your feedback means a lot to me! _

_Happy holidays to you all!_


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